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From Far and Wide, Video Gamers Join in a Child Charity

Mike Krahulik, left, and Jerry Holkins created Childs Play, a charity that was conceived in part to offset the negative reputation of video gamers.Credit
Kevin P. Casey for The New York Times

The young patients at Seattle Children’s Hospital awoke this Christmas Day to gifts from a sprawling culture not frequently associated with charity: video gamers.

It has been three years since Eve Kopp, associate director at Seattle Children’s, was approached by an organization called Child’s Play that wanted to donate video games to children suffering from severe illnesses. What she did not expect that first Christmas were the trucks bearing more than $200,000 worth of goods contributed by gamers and game producers across the country. Today there is a video game system for every room at the hospital, in addition to the gifts that arrive each year for individual patients.

Child’s Play was midwived by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, better known to gamers as Gabe and Tycho of Penny-Arcade.com, a Web site that carries essays and comics about gaming culture. Their charity, based in Seattle, has by now raised more than $2 million and has gone global, benefiting sick children not only in the United States but also in Canada, Britain, Egypt and Australia. This year a Child’s Play dinner auction brought in $210,000.

Mr. Krahulik and Mr. Holkins created Penny-Arcade in 1998, then decided after five years that their broad reach could be used for good. But the challenge for Child’s Play was to capitalize on a demographic never known to move mountains: young men, 16 to 25, who spend large sums on a hobby frequently dismissed as childish pastime.

“The very first year, video games were taking a huge beating in the press, and we knew it wasn’t fair,” Mr. Holkins said. “We wanted to do something charitable or different, so we asked, ‘What if we could get good press about gamers?’ ”

So is the motive for Child’s Play simply public relations? “It played a role at first,” Mr. Holkins said, “but frankly it’s not something we think about anymore. We’re fathers now, and that is our motivation.”

Each participating hospital works with Child’s Play to build a wish list on Amazon.com. Gamers turn to those lists, where they buy items to be shipped to the hospital or donate money through a PayPal account.

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While the leaders of most charities would take care to avoid criticizing donors, the Child’s Play venture has managed to remain largely separate from the outspokenness of its directors. The same day that Mr. Holkins, writing on Penny-Arcade.com, referred to a Sony marketing tactic as “idiotic,” the company coincidentally pledged to donate all the profits from the first day’s sale of a new product, Pirates Constructible Strategy Game.

Frequent criticism from Penny-Arcade, said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, “doesn’t mean we don’t get a good laugh from their comics and their caustic wit.” Besides, Mr. Smedley said, Child’s Play “really helps bring our industry together for the common purpose of helping kids.”

That common purpose drew Bernie Burns to get involved. Mr. Burns is a member of Rooster Teeth, a troupe that produces “Red vs. Blue,” an online comedy series based on the game Halo. Rooster Teeth attended the Child’s Play dinner auction this year and successfully bid $9,000 to record dialogue for the coming video game Halo 3, a prize comparable to being given a cameo appearance in a movie.

The game’s developer, Bungie Studios, would probably have allowed the troupe to record the dialogue anyway, but “it’s for charity,” Mr. Burns said of the $9,000 bid.

The gifts from Child’s Play help young patients get through treatment with a better outlook, said Kim Korte, the child life manager at Seattle Children’s. Because the game systems are portable, they can be taken by patients from treatment to treatment. And the children are less frightened when they know they will be able to play while receiving that therapy, however uncomfortable.

“It helps the kids cope,” Ms. Korte said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: From Far and Wide, Video Gamers Join in a Child Charity. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe